The year is 1948 and the Tennessee Valley Authority has just completed work on Watauga Lake in eastern Tennessee. The lake will cover nearly six thousand acres, most of which has been occupied by the same families for nearly two hundred years. As the waters rise, Violet Thurston Oliver is forced to vacate her ancestral home, leaving behind that which she loves . . . and that which she desperately fears. Violet makes a new life for herself and her son but always in the shadowy recesses of her mind she wonders . . . Will her secret be forever covered by the murky waters or will it rise one day and change her life forever?